“I get nervous in conversations. I don’t know what people are saying, and I’m self-conscious about the way I sound.”

Notice how all these issues have to do with understanding and speaking. If you learn a language by eye, you will always have issues understanding and speaking.

This is because the skills of understanding and speaking are rooted in sound.

When you speak to someone, you are creating sounds with your mouth.

When you listen to someone, you are hearing sounds with your ears.

You can’t see sound, you can only hear it.

So you can’t learn understanding and speaking by Eye; you can only learn understanding and speaking by Ear.

As a child, you understood this.

You didn’t learn your first language by memorizing flash cards and studying grammar textbooks. You learned your first language by listening to the sounds around you and mimicking them.

If using your ears worked for your first language, why switch it up?

Language Learning by Ear – The Three Stages

There are 3 stages to learning a foreign language by ear.

Stage 1: Capacity (Hearing & Pronunciation)

Stage 2: Conversation (Speaking & Understanding)

Stage 3: Command (Reading and Writing)

In the Capacity stage, you learn how to hear and pronounce the sounds. In the Conversation stage, you learn how to communicate with the sounds. In the Command stage, you improve your eloquence through reading and writing.

To get through these three stages, you will need a system. An effective system is one that gets you through each stage as quickly as possible.

The Mimic Method is the fastest way to get through the three stages.

Stage 1: Capacity

Capacity is about learning to hear and pronounce the sounds of your target language.

The Mimic Method builds your Capacity in three steps:

Sound Capacity

Syllable Capacity

Sentence Capacity

Sound Capacity

Every language has a set of elemental sounds, or “phonemes”. These sounds combine to make everything you will ever hear or say in the language.

For example:

Spanish has 39 Elemental Sounds,

English has 43 Elemental Sounds,

German has 46 Elemental Sounds.

Struggle with any elemental sound, and you will struggle with the whole language.

In The Mimic Method, you master each Elemental Sounds through phonetic training, self-recording, and drills.

Syllable Capacity

Elemental sounds combine to form syllables. These syllables are the building blocks of speech.

In your target language, some syllables will be harder to pronounce than others. This is because some elemental sound combinations are trickier than others.

In The Mimic Method, you master every possible Syllable through frequency analysis, self-recording, and drills.

Sentence Capacity

Syllables combine with rhythm and intonation to make sentences.

Rhythm is about the spacing and stress of syllables.

Intonation is about how the pitch of your voice goes up and down as you speak.

Every language has its own set of rhythm and intonation patterns.

In the Mimic Method, you learn to mimic fast native sentences through musical training, self-recording and drills.

Once you can mimic, you can pick up new words and phrases just by hearing them.

Stage 2: Conversation

In the conversation stage, your goal is to understand and speak without difficulty. The Mimic Method speeds up your progress to this goal in four steps:

Simple Conversation

Scripted Conversation

Spontaneous Conversation

Sophisticated Conversation

Simple Conversation

Simple conversation is about knowing just enough to get by in a conversation. The fastest way to achieve this is to focus on the 80/20 of communication.

The 80/20 principle states that 20% of inputs produces 80% of outputs. That means that with a few hundred words and phrases, you can communicate most things.

In The Mimic Method, you learn the most commonly used words and phrases by ear. With these basic words and phrases, you can start to “get by” in the language.

Scripted Conversation

In your life, there are always stories and conversations that come up over and over again. If you know everyone will ask these questions, why not prepare the perfect response ahead of time?

Then you will impress people with your abilities and gain speaking confidence.

In The Mimic Method, you memorize personalized scripts by ear. With these scripts, you can begin to build your foundation for speaking confidence.

Spontaneous Conversation

When you run out of scripts, you will need to adapt to the moment with spontaneous conversation.The only way to get good at spontaneous conversation is to speak as much as possible.

In The Mimic Method, you practice conversing with as many people as possible. With enough practice in spontaneous conversation, you will have the ability to speak confidently in most situations.

Sophisticated Conversation

“Learn by Eye” programs place a strong emphasis on always having perfect grammar.

But it is impossible to speak with perfect grammar at the beginning. The only way to progress is to make countless mistakes.

That’s why The Mimic Method focuses on communication over correctness. That is, until you reach the Sophisticated Conversation step. At this step, you will shift your focus to correcting your speech.

In The Mimic Method, you correct your grammar by reviewing speech recordings and drilling your mistakes. With enough self-analysis and recording, you will naturally speak with proper grammar.

You can identify your grammar mistakes and group them into categories. Focus on fixing one category at a time, and you will perfect your grammar piecemeal.

Stage 3: Command

In your first language, you have a high level of education. You’ve read hundreds of books and articles in your lifetime. You’ve written countless essays over your school career.

As a result, you can speak well on a variety of subjects.

To achieve this level of Command in your target language, you need to read and write a lot.

There are two steps to Command:

Scholastic Command

Stylistic Command

Scholastic Command

It is finally at this stage that you learn to read. It is also at this stage that you study grammar theory. With the tools of literacy and an advanced knowledge of grammar, you can now read a large variety of books.

Reading is the fastest way to develop advanced vocabulary. This advanced vocabulary will spill into your conversations and make you sound more intelligent.

Stylistic Command

The final step of the language learning journey is stylistic command.

There is infinite room to develop your stylistic command in a language.

“Style” refers to the way you communicate something. For example, “That dog runs fast” is a simple style. “That canine bounds across space at an extraordinary velocity,” is a more advanced style.

Writing is the fastest way to develop your style. As you get better at writing, you will catch up with native speakers in their command of the language.

Review

The graphic above illustrates the full process. As you can see, there are 3 stages and 9 steps to the Mimic Method. The stages all begin with the letter “C”, and the steps all begin with the letter “S”. Let’s review each step in order:

Sound Capacity

Syllable Capacity

Sentence Capacity

Simple Conversation

Scripted Conversation

Spontaneous Conversation

Sophisticated Conversation

Scholastic Command

Stylistic Command

This covers the basics to The Mimic Method. But we are just scratching the surface. To better understand our Method, we recommend reading the following articles (coming soon):